My ex and I used to fish- a lot. Every weekend, every vacation - fresh water fishing. We have stayed in tents, fishing cabins, hotels, motels and rented condos, we are used to whatever accommodations there are.

One year we wanted to fish a lake we had never tried, so we booked into the small locally owned motel that we had passed weekly for years en route to a different lake. I called and discussed with the owner our plans and asked about breakfast accommodations at their inhouse restaurant, cooking allowed in rooms, daily linen change, etc. We agreed on a weekly rate with linen changes every other day and a refrigerator was to be put in our room. We also had my FIL joining us for the week. Overjoyed with an upcoming week of fishing - we take off after work Friday and drive to the motel.

Now, we get up about 5 am and hit the water well before 7:00 usually returning around 10:30 for lunch and a nap and then we fish again in the early evening until around dark, so getting our sleep at night is important to us because we get up so early.

Apparently, this motel catered to a younger crowd from a nearby college town! Around 2:30 am they started arriving with loud music in their cars, door slamming (car & room), dragging bags up and down the sidewalk outside of our room, some doofus drug a stick down the wall of all the rooms across the door and window screen of each room - aggghhh! I was furious to be awakened two hours before I had to get up. Assuming this was just a one time thing we let it go and fished all day and into the evening. That night - same scenario again, I guess after the bars closed (2:00 am) the young people found their way to their rooms and again - loud music, racket outside our room, doors slamming, yelling, singing, etc. One bumbling fool banged on our door until my husband finally opened it and the drunken idiot realized he had the wrong room - did not apologize, just said oops and wandered off.

The next morning we hit the owner's office about 5:30 wanting to know if we could be moved or if they could be - whatever it took for us to get to sleep ALL night.

Spring break - the motel was full and they could not accommodate our request. At that point I asked, knowing that you would be full with spring break college students why didn't you either let me know this or at least give us an end room? Knowing that we would be wanting to sleep and get an early start on fishing as we discussed...her response, "we rely on these college kids to fill our place up spring break week, that's a healthy part of our income." Well, I understood that, did she understand that she could have had two more rooms of happy college kids as opposed to two rooms of unhappy fishermen? All she had to do was tell me, we could have booked elsewhere and stayed at this place during a non spring break week. She was not willing to ask them to quiet down at 2:30 either - they're just kids having fun she said.

We moved and have never stayed there again or recommended it to any of our fishing buddies or friends.

Netgear. Never buying another router from them again. Paid $150 for one on April 25, 2011. It is 1 year and 8 months old and it just died. Total brick. No power surge, nothing.

If I had bought the same router after July 1, 2011 I would have gotten a replacement because they come with a lifetime warranty now. But nope, I bought it two months earlier and so I'm out of luck. $150 for something that lasted less than 2 years!Never again.

My nice new Belkin router cost me less than $100 and is working nicely, right out of the box.

Netgear. Never buying another router from them again. Paid $150 for one on April 25, 2011. It is 1 year and 8 months old and it just died. Total brick. No power surge, nothing.

If I had bought the same router after July 1, 2011 I would have gotten a replacement because they come with a lifetime warranty now. But nope, I bought it two months earlier and so I'm out of luck. $150 for something that lasted less than 2 years!Never again.

My nice new Belkin router cost me less than $100 and is working nicely, right out of the box.

They got me as well. I bought an expensive router in March of this year, and it died in July after the three-month warranty was up. Their customer service wanted to charge $80 just to talk to me to help troubleshoot it, with no promise of getting it working. No way. Funny, I replaced my Netgear router with a Belkin router as well. So far so good.

I dropped the Netgear and went to an Apple Time Machine Router. I purposely purchased that model of Netgear because it was the most powerful router that supposedly could also have an external hard drive attached as well for network storage. Well after I purchased a 3TB hard drive, I come to find out that max external hard drive size was 1TB. After going round and round with them I said forget it and went and got the apple time machine router. I hooked up my 3TB hard drive and have been happy ever since.

FYI Netgear has a 1 time $19 service option. They won't tell you about it, but it is available if you ever have to call them and you are beyond your warranty period. Just ignore the $79 package offer

Netgear. Never buying another router from them again. Paid $150 for one on April 25, 2011. It is 1 year and 8 months old and it just died. Total brick. No power surge, nothing.

If I had bought the same router after July 1, 2011 I would have gotten a replacement because they come with a lifetime warranty now. But nope, I bought it two months earlier and so I'm out of luck. $150 for something that lasted less than 2 years!Never again.

My nice new Belkin router cost me less than $100 and is working nicely, right out of the box.

They got me as well. I bought an expensive router in March of this year, and it died in July after the three-month warranty was up. Their customer service wanted to charge $80 just to talk to me to help troubleshoot it, with no promise of getting it working. No way. Funny, I replaced my Netgear router with a Belkin router as well. So far so good.

DLink does it to me. Every single one fried or not working out of the box. The only ones that have ever worked their little fans to the nub are Netgear and Belkin.

I have a theory that everyone has a nemesis is everything, especially technology. Never had a problem with Toshiba laptops but all Apple products and software do not work for me at all, ipad, itunes, iphone, all nada. Dell commits hara kiri as soon as I get my hands on it, same with Kingston. Sansa products will work for me until the end of time and any rechargeable battery other than uniross fries for me within a few weeks. Considering a lot of computer parts all come from the same manufacturer it is rather bizarre.

It's the same with power tools. Give me a name brand and I will manage to blow it up within 3 uses while the 50$ el cheapo for sale crud will work stupendously for years for me. This also works for cars, give me an older, early 90's one and it will run even if it's left with just 4 wheels and an engine. Put me in a brand new car something happens within a few hours. It's not all electrical it can be someone hitting me in the new car in a parking lot.

I had a Linksys router that upped and died on me within 3 months, and the customer service gave me a hard time about replacing it giving me BS reason after another. So I got a D-Link which worked much better and I was glad I had replaced it when I heard about the Cisco Cloud thing. But it didn't tick me off too much since I'd gotten the Linksys for cheap off Newegg.

The one that did cheese me off and made me swear to never buy from them again (even more so than Craig Electronics with the tablet I purchased from them) was MSI. I build my own computers and a couple years ago felt the need to build a new, better machine than the one I had at the time. Which still runs, despite my mother's ability to fry computers.

Since I had a little extra cash to burn, I got one of the top of the line motherboards from MSI that had all the bells and whistles I was looking for. Which refused to do anything other than go to BIOS. It'd let me go into the BIOS to get the settings done to my specification, it detected all the RAM, and the processor with no problem, as well as the hard drive and other miscellaneous stuff. But beyond the BIOS? Nada.

When I tried to install Win 7, it kept saying the infuriating message about hitting the key to continue, wouldn't acknowledge any key I hit. So I spent over a week running every possible scenario in order to get the thing going. Installed win 7 on the new drive by hooking it up to my old computer. Still gave me the message about hitting a key to continue to the installation.

During all of this, I kept calling their tech support and not getting through to anyone. Finally I did, run through the list of everything I'd done and they say to flash the BIOS. Which according to the warranty that came with the motherboard would render said warranty null and void. I mention that I don't want to void the warranty, the board is defective, can I just get a replacement? I'm told, no, it'll be fine, we'll note it in the system so if it doesn't work, we'll replace it then.

Flashing the BIOS didn't resolve any of the issues, and even though the guy's note was in there, the returns people didn't care, I voided my warranty.

Furious, and really wanting my shiny new toy, went to CompUSA where I got an Asus motherboard that while didn't have all of the bells and whistles, it was compatible with my processor and RAM. Within an hour of getting home I had my new machine up and running. It took that long because the heatsink that I had for my processor is a royal pain to latch and unlatch.

There's a good chance I'm never shopping at Wilson's Leathers again, which is a shame because they have some really good deals, but I'm tired of playing is-it-on-sale-or-isn't-it.

I went last week, and found a hat that I was interested in buying for my brother for Christmas. It was in a display that indicated that it would be discounted to about $25. The other side of the sign indicated that a hat of this hat's original price would be discounted to about $30, but this hat was definitely on the side that indicated it would be discounted to about $25, and there were numerous other hats of the same style with it (i.e., it did not appear to have been placed on the more highly discounted side in error). Nonetheless, when I went to check out it rung up at $30, and the clerk was disinclined to honor the posted price. So I put it down and left the store.

I had a coupon at home from a previous visit that was 60% off the entire store, +20% off and +20% off again on select styles. So I went back with that, and of course the hat wasn't one of the select styles. Annoying, but I knew there was a possibility of that happening, so I wasn't too upset.

Today was the straw that broke the camels back though. I received an email that they were having an early bird special today, 9 AM to 11 AM, wherein you could take an extra 30% off the entire store including clearance. I printed the email and went back for the third time. While there, I noticed another hat that I also wanted to purchase, and with the extra 30% it would only be $10. I grabbed both hats, and when I checked out the total was higher than it should have been. I inquired, and was told that the second hat was not included in the extra 30% off. I even took out my email printout and showed the clerk where it said an extra 30% off the entire store, but she refused to honor it. I bought the first hat, since it was ringing up with the extra 30% off and I had really had my heart set on it, but that is probably going to be the last purchase I will ever make from them.

Cheese Wheelz Pizza here in Windsor. I had been having a craving for a panzerotti, and thought I would try this place just down the street from me. I went to pick it up, and got home, dug in, the bacon was mostly fatty, and still oinking (as DH likes to put it), and there was no lid on the marinara sauce that came with it, so I called them to let them know, all they had to say was that they were busy, and as for the sauce cup, there were no lids. No apology or offer for credit for future order (I've had that offered many times - not that I'm a chronic complainer - when something goes wrong with an order at other restaurants), and they didn't even seem to care. I will not go back there ever again after that!

I can't say that I'll never shop there again, especially since I still have a gift certificate balance, but I will probably be frequenting my favorite thrift store a lot less.

We went this past weekend. I was standing in the housewares section looking at dishes. A few feet away from me, out of my arm's reach and untouched by me, a stack of stuff that had been piled up and shoved onto a shelf fell over. In that stuff was a ceramic bowl of some sort (out of place, because I was standing in the wood/metal/plastic area). An employee came over saying "oh dear, oh my goodness" over and over again and I helped her clean it up. She came back a few minutes later and said, with the attitude of someone doing me a huge favor, that they weren't going to charge me for it but I needed to be careful, and if I broke anything that cost more than $10 they would charge me for it. (Note: I've been going to this store for at least 14 years--the first time I remember going was when I was 16--and have never broken anything. I've also never seen this woman before so I assume she was new. And, not that she could know this, but if I had broken it I would have apologized and offered to pay for it.)

I said "OK, but I didn't knock it over. It just fell off the shelf."

She said "yeah, but if something breaks and they see you standing by it, they'll charge you for it, so just be careful."

I very seriously doubt that's their actual policy, but I just said "OK" and went about my shopping. When we got out to the car, my husband told me that when he had gone to the bathrooms to rinse off my daughter's pacifier, he heard the woman complaining about me and calling me a liar, saying "there was no one else around and she was just standing there." I've been feeling more meh about this thrift store than usual lately, but that was when my opinion of the place really soured. Yeah, people complain about their customers. But at the very least they should make sure they're doing it out of earshot of other customers. Even if it wasn't my husband that overheard it, another customer doesn't need to hear how an employee is annoyed by someone that's spending money at their store.

That's not the only reason, but it was more or less the last straw. I was already starting to think that, since my house is mostly furnished and this is the good furniture thrift store, that I was ready to move on. The last time I went there someone had decided that hobnail milk glass was super collectible and had raised the prices on things like bud vases and tiny candy dishes to $10-$20. You don't even want to know how much the bigger pieces were. Some of the pieces weren't even actual milk glass, but just cheap lightweight knockoffs with big seams down the side. To compare, I bought two authentic hobnail bud vases there a few months ago for 60 cents each. Milk glass vases on eBay seem to go for up to $5 each. None of this was separated out in any way, it was just all mixed in with the other tchotchkes and housewares. And it was only the hobnail milk glass--the grape/fruit patterned or any other pattern was priced as usual.

They've also got signs up indicating that they're trying to rebrand themselves as a thrift/antiques store. That's fine, but IMO that's going to be tricky at best and business-ending when all your customers feel alienated at worst. So I think from now on I'll just pass them by unless I've got a specific piece of furniture I'm looking for.

I used to take advantage of TeamBuy (which is like Groupon in that, if enough people take advantage of a deal offer, you can buy something for a lower price). In August 2012, they offered a really good deal on Gilette razor blades - I think it was two dozen razor blades for $50, or something like that. Those things are so expensive, and I knew that two dozen would last my husband for ages, so I jumped on it.

Towards the end of September, I realized that I hadn't gotten my blades yet. I e-mailed TeamBuy and was told, somewhat snippily, that the shipments wouldn't go out until 4-6 weeks after the offer expired, which was September 15. So, in other words, I might not receive my purchase until early November. Fine.

Early November came and went. I e-mailed them again. "You'll receive them by November 15 at the latest!" Well, November 15 came and went. I e-mailed them again. "They're being held up at customs. You'll get them by the end of November." Nope. I e-mailed them again and said "This is ridiculous. I've been waiting for over three months." They finally admitted that the vendor had let them down, then they said magnanimously that they would give me a refund - in TeamBuy Bucks. Riiiight. I replied "Not good enough. I never intend to buy anything from you again, so I require a refund on my Mastercard, please." Their latest e-mail said "It looks like you had received the wrong email. Here is what you should have received as the refund was processed to your credit card. I have now refunded your purchase and you should see it reflected on your statement in the next 3-5 business days. You will also receive an email with your refund transaction ID shortly."